| Description | Sign. and seal of lessee.
Deeds Nos. DR0429/288A, 290 and 291A, B, and C refer to the much-shared and often mortgaged portion of a tenement in Well Street. On this (DR0429/288A) Albey raised £30, part of an unpaid mortgage of £50, which as he failed to redeem, the house was conveyed to Jonathan Nicholls and Will. Grascombe (DR0429/290A, B), of whom the former speedily mortgaged it again as security for £50 from Sir Tho. White's loan fund advanced to (probably his nephew), John Mayo (DR0429/291A, B). Nicholls' will (DR0429/291D) has the interesting feature of a bequest to the Girls' Blue Coat School. Nat. Spires (DR0429/288B) is described as a "coffee-man," an unusual word, which might either refer to a salesman of "Mocha's berry brown" or to the keeper of a coffee-house, such as were then the resort of all the polite world. Mrs. Samwell (ib.), who formerly inhabited a house in Little Mark Street, the aristocratic quarter, is commemorated, together with her loved sister, Dame Mary Bridgeman, in a medallion portrait in the Baptistry of St. Michael's Church.
Drayton (DR0429/289) is a fairly common name, and the bearer of it may have had no connection with the poet who has made it illustrious, but Shakespeare's contemporary, Michael Drayton, had such charming associations with Coventry that I cannot forbear this passing reference. He was received, as a youth, into the household of Sir Henry Goodere at Molesworth, who, says Mrs. Stopes ("Shakespeare's Contemporaries," [p.30] had a town house in Coventry. It was at this town house at "Mich Park" (Mich Park Street) that on some 4th of August Anne Goodere, Drayton's [Idea] "his poetic, and [perhaps] actual, love was born. The poet celebrates Coventry in "A hymne to his Lady's Birthplace," and in the Warwickshire [Canto] of the [?"Poly-lbion"] he dwells on the similarity of the names of Godiva and Goodeere. It is also interesting to remember that another Elizabethan sonmetteer, Bartholomew Griffin, author of [?"Widesea"] was actually buried on December 15th, 1602, in Trinity Church (Stopes, 251). |